merry christmas!

Man, I really hate painting. I wish I could just draw all day and use watercolors and markers and pens. Paint is just so messy and old



this is a christmas card i made for my friend Emi! I cut it all out by hand with an exacto knife! It's by far the coolest christmas card I've ever made. I put it in one of my college portfolios

more inspirationy stuff

david choe is such a babe

inspiration

I started my first piece for my concentration, and i dont' think I'm goign to change it anymore because I want to stick with something and commit to it. And before I start any piece i have to look around for inspiration, and this is what I have for now


as well as some stuff i can't seem to link. hmm.

austraaalia

Greg

I want to get a sex change to Australian.

17:55Karen

XD

17:55Greg

I think that's how it works, anyways

17:55Karen

i think it's called

citizenship

17:56Greg

Hm

As long as that comes with the accent and charming antics, I'm game.

i love looking through other people's sketchbooks.

SQUID!

I have lots and lots and lots of things to do because I've hit one of those busy patches of the school year, but today after school, I decided to take pictures of the various types of seafood in our house right now.
I got sidetracked, big time.
I don't know if you've ever seen a jumbo squid in real life before and held on in your hands, but they are fucking AWESOME!

i spent 5 hours drawing it. I'm really happy with it. and I hope i will be tomorrow too. this kills like 3 birds with one stone because it can go in my portfolio for college, portfolio for scholastic, and risd application.

i'd say it was a productive way to spend my time then.

artistic heroes!

"rogue activities"
Deanna Staffo - http://www.deannastaffo.com/index.htm
i cannot tell you how much i love her style. She makes me want to go to MICA just because she teaches there. I love how she can draw people very accurately but still have a distinct playfulness to how she renders them. Her lines have so much character.
title?
Paris is burning

Lizzy Stewart - http://www.abouttoday.co.uk/
I haven't been looking at her work for a really long time like staffo, but I like what I see so far. Her drawings are kind of childish but they have a confidence in them that makes their lopsidedness very intentional and effective. The simplicity of her work is also very confident and it works well. I wish I could achieve that kind of effect because I feel like I need to overwork a lot of my stuff.

"Hansel and Gretel"
Chuneunsil - http://www.chuneunsil.com/
I love her work. I literally am in love with it. Everything is so delicate and her use of negative space is just AMAZING in every single piece. I love it love it love it. I really want to know how she does her stuff, but unfortunately her site does not tell much and I'm pretty sure she lives in Korea, which is awesome. I would guess that it's watercolor, but you can never be really sure. There must be some digital elements to it. It doesn't matter to me though; I love it anyway.

"Pandarama"
Heiko Windisch - http://thestateofthings.de/portfolio/
I've been following this guy's work for the longest time, probably about two years. His style is so distinctive and while it is narrow, it never gets old. It used to really break my heart how imaginative his stuff is. It's also ridiculously cute.

so that's four...can I just use like one of the other five people I've already posted on?? I haven't had as much time to look at art as I usually do, but these are some pretty consistent ones that I've always followed.
EDIT: I have to post another one
title?
title?
Gemma Correll - http://www.gemmacorrell.com/
She is pretty standard as far as illustrators go because her work is very illustrator-y and graphic design-y, but I like it for her style. I don't really know what else to say except that I love her cats and her people, and if I were in charge of a magazine I'd hire her to do illustrations all the time.

FIN

I really enjoy this. I wish I could design noodle bowl packaging.
I (kind of) finished a painting. I just have to bring it in to school for deliberation. I'm rather pleased with it though, so I think anything that needs to be changed should be minor...
Lindsay and I went to PNCA today to learn about how to document art work for submission to competitions and online or whatnot. It's a lot more complicated than you might think. From his example, it might take anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour to have a good photo of a piece of art. It involves a gray card, metering, a histogram, self-timer, the choice between black white and possibly gray backdrops, photoshop, levels, skewing and stretching. It's craziness. be glad mrs. mcbride does most of it for us!

and i finished The Whistling Season. I have no idea what I am going to paint for it...

rage

First I'd like to say that I really like that we're required to update our blogs every week because it gives me something interesting to look at now. Before, everyone's posts stayed all static and boring.

Now i'm going to bitch about my mom. A minute ago or so I was just trying to type out a letter to Gayatri in French, and my mom comes in first saying how feminine and pretty SAIC's viewbook is. I'm already kind of annoyed because I hate it when she tries to affirm her undeveloped aesthetic senses by talking about how colors match or how she swears she could do graphic design just because she likes to call things pretty. Then she demands to know how many pieces I have done, so I tell her 8 because that's how many I've done since the beginning of the year that would go into my portfolio.
This number clearly incites some complaints. She pulls out a pen and writes down the number eight, while admonishing me for not being more productive. Still talking with that irritating sense of infinite wisdom on everything related to art school, she writes down the numbers 15 and 20 with a dash between them and underlines 15 twice while emphasizing that this is the minimum number of works required by art schools for portfolios. She again admonishes me for not being more productive.
You have no idea how fucking pissed I am that she thinks she can berate me for something like this. Since the beginning of the year I've been working as hard as I can, with as much creative productivity as possible while still balancing other school work. When we were visiting schools on the east coast she insisted that I needed to focus on studying and standardized tests before I could work on art, so I conceded, telling her that I would study for the ACT and subject tests and whatever else she thought was important.
Now that I've gotten all those tests done and have everything I need to start and complete applications, she cannot reprimand me for not having completed more art pieces.
I think I started screaming at her to get out and shut up and then I pushed her over and stormed upstairs. I don't think I even had time to not get mad.

This artist is so cool!!! She uses primarily palette knife so everything looks all choppy and layered. Love it. I need to do a self portrait for the Utrecht thing! I mean, if i don't crank out a new one by dec 4, i can use fish tits, but i really want to do a painting.

http://www.francoise-nielly.com

pondering amidst the storm

I think it's great that art is the one thing for which I can handle working on several things at once. Normally, with like essays and assignments, it's stressful to be working on too much at once, but not with art! The more projects the better!
The only thing I'm not happy with is the pressure to get things DONE, as in completed and finished and ready to put up on a wall or sent away. We talked to this William Park guy at the Open Studios, and he said some bit on how he thinks that having deadlines detracts from the quality of the art because the constant pressure to be done changes your purpose for creating the art in the first place. Instead of just wanting to express an idea or illustrate a concept, you're looking to put something into your portfolio or sell something.
It must be real freedom to just do art for the sake of doing art.

favorite song words

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?qkzootxqtw0
"Climbing up the Walls"
Radiohead

I love this song. I always have. To me, it's just so sensual and mysterious..it's great.

"I am the key to the lock in your house
That keeps your toys in the basement
And if you get too far inside
You'll only see my reflection

It's always best when the covers up
I am the pick in the ice
Do not cry out or hit the alarm
You know we're friends till we die

And either way you turn
I'll be there
Open up your skull
I'll be there
Climbing up the walls

It's always best when the light is off
It's always better on the outside
Fifteen blows to the back of your head
Fifteen blows to your mind

So lock the kids up safe tonight
Shut the eyes in the cupboard
I've got the smell of a local man
Who's got the loneliest fear

That either way you turn
I'll be there
Open up your skull
I'll be there

Climbing up the walls
Climbing up the walls
Climbing up the walls"

5 faves A-Z

If you don't consider right now to be late, I don't envy you in the least because I hardly ever think there's anything romantic about the wee hours of the morning anymore.
I guess I have to pay for all the time I spent on the east coast not thinking about the homework I would have to make up.

Anyway, I know we have to make a post about our five favorite pictures from the A-Z project, and I think I heard that our next assignment is a piece inspired by them/finish the jesse reno paintings. well here are my five...
This is MY gluttony picture, i love it so much with all the hands holding doughnuts and little grady's mouth cut off and ilya....not gonna lie melis i like mine better than yours! I don't think it would make a good painting, but then again there's a difference between 'inspired by' and 'of'
This one is sly because I think Becky is looking particularly on the sly here. I just really like the emotion that comes through on the partial bit of face and the spy environment of the background...it hardly even bothers me that it's a little blurry.
Mmm...took this the night before, organic. I really like it though. Sweet apples are the best.
Ugh, pictures of animals are so cliche and overdone, but I love this dog so much; every time i see a dog i miss him! he's "one of my favorite kachels". I called it best friend
Yesterday night. what can i say, my neighbors party hard.

So most of my photos I like much much more as photos than I ever would as paintings, but yes i know it's inspired by not of and i dont want to do such a literal painting as just painting straight from the picture itself. i remind myself more and more every day i need to do more painting from life, but it's hard anyway to separate what i like as a photo from what i'd like as a painting. or a drawing. I could do a drawing, and I do always like those more...
I'm really good at coming up with ideas for art, and not so good at being proactive and starting them. I made a list (I make lists ceaselessly, not just when i procrastinate i promise) of all the ideas I have in my sketchbook, and then i made a list for each one of why I haven't started them yet. it looks like this

cat pattern painting - no reason
black like me - no reason
washing machine - no reason
eat fish - picture not back yet
3 legged animals - no lino block yet
make sweatshirt - no materials yet
do as i say not as i do - no canvas
boy fisherman - no materials yet

no reason = no time
schoooooooooooooooooooooooool

R to the I to the S to the D

RISD IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO AMAZING

Well, like a true pacer, I'm sick right now; I've got this beastly sore throat that makes me wheeze and pant and sigh and hack out coughs, especially when climbing up hills.
Anyway, RISD is great. It's beautiful and has amazing facilities. We went to the drawing building and the pieces up on the walls did not look like first quarter freshmen work...maybe it wasn't.

and this is part of their application!

"Three drawing samples are required of all candidates. Each drawing must be done using graphite pencil on a sheet of white paper measuring 16” x 20” (40 cm x 50 cm); other drawing materials should not be used. The first drawing must represent a bicycle. The second drawing must utilize both sides of the sheet of drawing paper. For the third drawing, consider something from three perspectives and relate your three visualizations together on the page.

You may approach these three drawings in any way you wish. For example, your drawings may be realistic or abstract; you may choose to draw an object alone or place it in a situation; you can draw the whole object or only a portion of it, etc."

sweet!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know for sure that if I'm going to apply to one art school, it'll be RISD. Pratt was OK, but nothing as amazing as RISD...let's just hope i can get in :/:/ that portfolio is going to need work...good thing their application isnt due until like February.

I'm really excited for portfolio day.

i can't wait to be home, really. Just Brown tomorrow and then Boston University after that, and I get to be homehome home where loads of make-up homework awaits me. shit! I miss art! maybe pictures later!

<3

I LOVE THIS PAINTING
aaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhh

http://www.blackfish.com/images/photos/CB_InDv.jpg

aww yeah. more field trip photos later

Jeff Koons

when I'm looking around at art and making my bookmarks, I usually like to stick to my small name illustrators and very contemporary graphic artists. I think I'd heard the name Jeff Koons before because he's famous and all, but it didn't really mean anything to me until I decided to look it up today and I went to his website.

At first his work seems kind of flashy and silly...
and a little surreal but mostly silly. Then I realized that the paintings weren't collages or photoshop, they're oil paintings! they're also huge. The cake one is something like 12 feet tall and 9 feet wide.
also an oil painting.
I dont' understand his 3D work as much because, like i've already posted, I just don't really get 3D art, but someo f his work is really intriguing.
or just lewd
but some of it's interesting. He has a whole series of "prenew" and "the new" that is an arrangement of old and new household appliances and the evolution of technology, and then he has a bunch of inflatable toys....
his work is really strange, yet I think it has some value to think about. It reminds me a lot of pop art except that he's modern. some of his stuff is very Claes Oldenburg, like huge reproductions of kind of banal things, but then it's also very andy warhol with reproductions of commercial things like cigarettes and basketballs...the odd thing is that he started making work in about the late 70's, which is a decade after the pop artists, or at least on the tail end of their generation. I'd love to be able to see his work in a museum or something.
all images from www.jeffkoons.com!!

Yoskay Yamamoto

To be frank, I don't understand 3D art at all. I just don't get the why and how of things made out of clay and "found" things and things vaguely reminiscent of other things, and I am pretty much fine with that. But I was looking at this artist's work on her website and because I didn't like her paintings that much, I decided to take a glance at her sculpture, which is unusual for me because I normally just skip over it, and I found myself pleasantly surprised. I think if I did 3D work at all, it would look like hers.

I love this one in particular. floating fish...

natural habitat

IT'S SO NICE BEING BACK IN THE ART ROOM LATE LATE LATE AGAIN!!1

just me and free paint


I'm waiting for my painting to dry - i'm painting on wood, which I've actually NEVER done before! yay for trying new things. It's a painting on a cutting board of a fish on a cutting board. I found a discarded cutting board at Sam's house yesterday and they let me have it, so it's pretty much perfect.
ssssoooo much creative energy

hold on it's not your time yet

shit
i feel like i always have to put art on hold because of everything else
like ACT studying, SAT subject tests, college essays, college visits, ear infections, chinese school, club fairs, calculus, sleep...
i wish i didn't want to take 8 classes this year, especially when I have a portfolio to grow.
I miss summer when art came first!

summer business

Well I'm guessing we're supposed to make a post about what we did over the summer...and post pictures, but I haven't taken any pictures because my camera sucks and my art is all at school.

Anyway, I did the pre-college program at SFAI, the san francisco art institute, which is apparently one of the most conceptual art schools in the country, but I don't feel like I really got pushed in that area, because most of what I did was just traditional painting.
Umm, the experience was still valuable though because I got to be around art kids doing arty things and they were more inspiring than anything else. I actually made a post about it on my other blog.
I'm still really into illustration and water colors and my style didn't change, but that's ok, i'm ready for more.

I just got an NAHS donation from Palisade's market! go pacers!! yay for palisades market!!

this is much better than last year, when I went around to almost every business in downtown LO and they all said no...sad face. well, they don't get to be on our really cool poster. they lose.

final post!

http://lhs.loswego.k12.or.us/z-mcbrides/AP/2009/09APbreadthconcentration.htm

OK, well...art class is great now since our oncentrations are finished and there is no longer that sense of urgency that there was when our concentrations were in progress. However, I don't know if I ever really felt that panic and pressure of not having a piece done or worse, not having an idea because I had everything planned out before I even started. I essentially knew exactly what every piece was going to be, and the only thing I mused over was a composition, and even then all I had to do was talk to Steven or look on flickr. I think this was a good thing in that it lessened the stress of the class significantly, but it also detracted from the frenzied creativity that other people had when they were crunched for time. So, I'd recommend planning out pieces but also leaving some wiggle room for expanding your ideas.
I like my book a lot, and if that was anything like real illustration jobs, I'd love to become an illustrator. I'm psyched this summer to go to san francisco and scare the shit out of myself when I learn how to explore a wider range of ideas and styles. sweet.

FTW

May 6, 2009 at 1:23 pm

I bound my book and put it online and forwarded it to my teacher Shannon McBride and I took Dalton and the ghost off of the stretcher bars and jackson had to help pull up the staples and now after the quality section is sent in I'm done.

AWESOME!

The year is so close to being over. According to the art room countdown we have 25 days left. 25 days! This week was supposed to be my good student week, and it coincides nicely with teacher appreciation week. What this means is that I won't put off doing any homework until the day it's due at break or lunch and I'll study for all the tests that I have.
so good luck
now i can go do my 3 research papers...

spring break inspiration

Left: how to gift wrap a octopus Right: Stormy Legend
Artist: Trish Grantham
What I find inspiring about her work is the dreamy style of her characters but also the quality of the paintings themselves. The backgrounds all have that encaustic-ish feel and they have very loose compositions. I guess it'd be nice to be able to mix the "fine art" thing with the cute cartoony things.

Left: Private project
right: from Uncle Leon's adventures in the Romanian Steppes
Artist: Yaniv Shimony
This artist is an illustrator from Jerusalem and his children's books are great, or at least, I like them better than his illustrations. They are all very whimsical but the drawings are good and have a lot of character. i wish I had seen his books before I had started my concentration because I could've picked up some tips and technical sort of ideas. If i ever illustrate another book...I will make it focused more on the characters and not so much the compositions like with this one.

phewww~~~

dry well...AGAIN

So, I was doing my sketchbook entry last night, and I was drawing a picture of this guy at the library who finds a sandwich between the books and is pulling it out, but when I finished drawing it, I didn't like it. I figured it was because I'm tired of how i draw and how everything comes out looking the same...:(
i haven't had a good inspiration for a while and I want to do art, but I don't feel like I have a lot to work with. Hopefully the inspiration assignment will help over spring break. Maybe another part of it is that I haven't had time to do nothing and let these artsy ideas accumulate. I've been super busy. Junior year SUCKS. Sleep is my elusive friend.

just in case i don't get a sketchbook entry done....

http://www.illustrationfriday.com/

We should do this! Well, actually I just thought about it, and it's basically what our sketchbook entries are like since we have stickers and stuff, but nobody REALLY adheres to those anyway right??
I just think it'd be interesting to compare all at once everyone's drawings.

Some of these are pretty charming!


Anyway
I made a list of things i have left to do for my concentration
.finish remaining pieces, der
.redo ugly russia page
.add footprints to pages?
.cover/back cover
.bind into a real book!!

i'm super excited to make it into a book. And I actually started a piece last class which is uncharacteristically punctual for me. It has a great composition, not going to lie.

I'm learning a lot about Pop art because I'm doing my APUS paper on it. Hopefully at least. Really, the only reason I'm still in the class is because I figured the research paper would be a good chance for me to get to know some topic of my choice, and it's interesting to read about actual art history, since besides being super awesome at art, we don't really know anything ABOUT it...or at least i don't. for long.

February online critiqueeee

I am illustrating a children's book focusing on the use of watercolors and strong compositions. the pieces tell a story together but also may stand on their own, so while the book is all one element, the pieces can individually be considered as well.

I made the images exceptionally large just so that you can see them very clearly. These are the next two pages in the story. The first is when they go to the heartland, farms and dusty roads, that sort of business. Lindsay actually suggested that one to me. I originally was going to have them go to somewhere in Africa but I thought this would show more variety in their locations. The next one is in an airport - i hope that is obvious enough - but I can't say I like it all tha tmuch. It's boring looking and the plane is weird....I just noticed now I need to finish Abdul-Jahid's hump cover. It's frustrating when I can see how I want them to look in my head, but they dont' translate that way.

I dont' really have much else to say except that I think iwant to go back and rework the airport one a bit...I'm soooooo excited to make a book out of all this when I'm done, using my bookbinding skilllzzzz

"life is too short to waste my time hating my body this way" - 20 ways to love your body

sweet!

duuuuuuuuuude
http://www.froelickgallery.com/Artist-Detail.cfm?ArtistsID=224
found the artist who inspired lindsay and my portrait ideas! i love this dude's work and how scary everything looks makes me wish i had left my background empty.

adventures of lindsay and kaaaaaaaren

This weekend was sick
Lindsay and I went to First Thursday for the first time! and we made plenty of public transportation mistakes that we will LEARN FROM. haha.. I think we'll go again when it's sunnier. If you want to come we are totally down!!!!!!
we also went to hipbone saturday and I came away with two drawings I super like and I think I will stick in my breadth section. I picture my breadth section like a fat little monster and when I feed it the good art that we like he becomes full and happy and sometimes when I put things in it that I dont' like but need to put in to fill space, he is unhappy and growly. I should do an artist's rendition of this said monster. Actually we all do, because we all have breadth section monsters. excellent.

I can put penises on the internet if i drew them right???

Scholastic art awards were awesomeeeeeeee
so proud of you guys - scholarship/gold/silver key winners - the reception was inspiring!! I wish I could make better art. I liked the photography for the most part!!
someone put up pictures

~hanabi wannabee

i super like this guy's style!

i wish i coudl draw like that..

but they always come out distinctly

karen?

i also wish i could speak portugese.

pupu

Poetry would be so ugly without the spaces between the words

I have four breadth section ideas that I have yet to transform into tangible art, but I am getting on it. Scholastic is in about a week! I'm excited for the reception because I'm volunteering of course. Is anybody else afraid that when scholastic is over the mcBride will suddenly have a lot of time to devote to us and we will have a lot to do? Hmm
pictures from winter break in Seattle

i love this girl we try on ridiculous clothes and I LOVE FROZEN ASIAN YOGURT!